SOAP BOX

It may be no secret that we're a bunch of huge Star Wars nerds here at 5D. Today, November 16th marks the opening day of Season of the Force in Disneyland. We're pretty stoked to have this opening here in Anaheim. I was pretty jealous that Florida gets all of the Star Wars Weekends fun. So after anticipating the opening today, I rushed home from work and then headed over to Disneyland to renew my pass. The park closed at 10 P.M. today and by the time I got inside it was already 9:15. If I wanted to check out a lot of the new attractions, I would have to crunch some time.

After navigating through traffic, and forcing (unintended pun) our way through the parade crowd madness, we finally got to Tomorrowland to be greeted by the glorious Season of the Force sign. I've been waiting so long to check this out!

On the right side was a bright rebel logo.

To the left was the Imperial insignia.

Through the center of Tomorrowland were projections of stars, and various Star Wars logos. Just walking through this and snapping pictures got me more excited.

The first thing I wanted to check out was the movie props and models in the Star Wars Launch Bay. I love miniatures and models. I was super bummed at Star Wars Celebration, when we found out that they had closed off the line to see all the new movie props and costumes. So as I walked up, I thought "Wow this is so empty, this is great." And then I saw the sign that said it had closed at 8 P.M.

I wasn't going to let that get me down, so we walked straight across to try some of the Star Wars themed foods. I tried the First Order Burger, which is the new version of the Imperial Empire... Which is the Dark Side, hence the dark bun. You get it.

I grabbed my burger and we walked across to Pizza Port to grab a slice of pizza and a BB-8 cup. The pizza place was closed, so no cool cup or mediocre pizza.

After eating, we walked up to Hyperspace Mountain, which is the new Space Mountain but with a bunch of Star Wars projections inside. When I had checked the time at work it was 95 minutes. When we walked up to the ride, we saw that it had slimmed down to only an hour. For Space Mountain that wasn't that bad. So we walked up and right as we got to the line, we were told that the ride had broken down, and wouldn't reopen because there was only 15 minutes left until the park closed.

Here's the pretty sweet looking Tie Fighter popcorn bucket. Which I didn't get, because the popcorn vendors close early.

Trusty Star Tours is always there for me. And no, it didn't break down or anything. I was going to be really bummed if I got an old scene though. Or the Chewbacca scene that I always seem to get! The new scene took place on the planet Jakku. You and the Millennium Falcon are both being chased through the dessert by First Order Tie Fighters, and you end up flying through a fallen Star Destroyer. The new scene was pretty awesome, and at one point BB-8 comes rolling out beeping and booping as a hologram. He replaces Yoda, Admiral Ackbar, and the Princess in the cutscene that tells you about the rebel spy stuff.

R2 decided to turn right as I took this pic. Thanks Bud.

The first time I browsed the store I didn't notice they had 4 First Order Stormtroopers. This was about as close as I've gotten to seeing the movie props.

In the first trilogy Darth Vader had a lightsaber with a single blade. In the second trilogy Darth Maul had that double sided lightsaber. In the third trilogy Kylo Ren has a 3 bladed lightsaber. So I predict that the fourth trilogy will eventually have a lightsaber that looks like this. I'm calling it now, somehow they'll get four blades on that thing.

So that was how the night went. I was still pretty excited to renew my pass. I'll have to take a day trip back to Disneyland to actually get to experience all the new Star Wars stuff, but luckily Star Wars Battlefront released tonight! So that will definitely hold me over until the weekend.

Today was a little unlucky, but I still had fun documenting. It's 2 A.M. and it's definitely time to sign off.

-Jon

P.S. F*#$ you squarespace for crashing on me 4 times while writing this!